We caught up with the birds feeding on an area of wet pasture just behind the local cricket pitch. Initially we watched them from a discreet distance, but after seeing how indifferent the birds were to other people wandering around the area we moved a little closer. The flock then began moving directly towards us whilst feeding, until eventually they were less than 20 meters away. Getting that close to any wading bird is an unusual privilege, never mind something as exotic as these! A barbed wire fence and some Dock plants severely cut down the photo opportunities, but I managed to get a photo of one of the birds coming in to land, and Lil got a good shot of one on the ground.

I took along some sound recording gear, but the ibises were incredibly quiet, even when an occasional scuffle broke out amongst the flock. I didn’t think I’d recorded any calls at all, but after getting home and listening carefully I discovered what I’m pretty sure is a single faint call:

Certainly not the best recording I’ve ever made, but it was brilliant just to spend a couple of hours watching the birds up close.

While the recorder was running I also picked up a Cetti’s Warbler. First recorded as breeding in the UK in 1973, in the last 10 years or so there’s been a population explosion of these birds in south-west England and you can now find them almost anywhere where there’s a decent amount of marshland and scrubby bushes. From a sound recording point of view they’re very challenging, as their usual behaviour is to skulk in a bush for several minutes, call once, and then fly off to another bush, meaning the recordist is always one step behind!

Posted from Budleigh Salterton, England, United Kingdom.

Sunset on Little Haldon

Last night Lil and I were watching the BBC’s “Springwatch” programme¹ , which had a piece on Nightjars on the lowland heaths in Dorset. This reminded us that we have our very own Nightjar habitat just 2 miles from our house, the Little Haldon Heaths SSSI, and since it was a lovely evening we thought we’d go and see if any birds were calling.

We arrived at the heath just before sunset, and walked out to one of the more remote areas. The site is bordered by farmland and bisected by a well-used B-road, so vehicle noise is an issue everywhere. We heard the first Nightjar calling in the distance at around 21:40, some 20 minutes after sunset. This bird was too far away to record successfully, but hearing it churring along with a late Skylark and a just-awakening Tawny Owl was beautiful. We then slowly retraced our steps back to the parking area and came across another bird calling from a clump of conifer trees. Again, this was a little too far away to record, and after a few minutes it moved on to another part of the heath.

At this point we split up for a few minutes – Lil wanted to check out the local bat life with her detector and I wanted to look at the conifer trees to see whether there were any decent concealed recording sites close by. As I headed back down the path to meet up with Lil again I could hear a Nightjar calling in front of me. The bird had landed on a bare branch about 10m from where Lil was standing, and I managed to get this recording before it moved on. At the end of the recording you hear a wonderful example of the bird “clapping” by striking its wings together over its back as it flies away.

The recording was made with a Sennheiser ME66/K6 microphone and a Tascam HD-P2 recorder. Levels boosted by 20dB in post and some filtering applied using apQualizr to remove distant traffic noise.

Posted from Teignmouth, England, United Kingdom.

1. For those of you not from the UK this is a series which runs for a few weeks in late Spring following various wildlife stories using hidden cameras and location film crews [↩]

Dawlish Warren Pond

A few minutes beside the pond at Dawlish Warren, with Canada Goose (Branta canadensis), Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos), Little Grebe (Tachybaptus ruficollis), Coot (Fulica atra) and Willow Warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus) all making an appearance.

Posted from Exeter, England, United Kingdom.

Portabrace AR-HDP2 case

I recently bought a Portabrace¹ case for my Tascam HD-P2 recorder. It took a little while to arrive as the case had to be shipped from the USA (and judging by the date on the manufacturing tag I suspect it was made to order as well) but it was well worth the wait – it protects the recorder all round while still allowing easy access to every control and connector. This evening I tested it in the field for the first time, and while walking around the local lanes I came across this Blackbird (Turdus merula) singing in a hedge about 3 metres away, with the sound of the Aller Brook audible in the background:

Posted from Dawlish, England, United Kingdom.

1. The more-or-less industry standard navy blue bags you see almost every sound recordist carrying their gear in [↩]

Last night was damp and foggy, and a ship anchored off the coast was sounding its horn – the first time I’ve ever heard this from the house.

Recorded with a Sennheiser K6/ME66 microphone and an Olympus LS-10 recorder. Filtered in Cubase LE to remove noise and boost low frequencies.

Foghorn

20090520_whitethroat

Recorded with a Sennheiser K6/ME66 microphone and an Olympus LS-10 recorder. Gain boosted and aircraft noise removed using Cubase LE.

Posted from London, England, United Kingdom.

It’s over ten years since the one and only time I’d heard a Nightingale, and that was just a few brief snatches of song from a hedgerow in the Cotswold Water Park, so I was keen to hear the birds and maybe get some recordings. On Saturday morning we headed out to the wood to scope out possible recording sites. The weather was patchy, with strong gusts of wind and rain showers interspersed with periods of sun. We heard a few brief Nightingale calls at a couple of places in the wood, which of course stopped the moment I took out my recording equipment.

We decided that, weather permitting, we’d have another try in the evening when the birds would be in full song. Throughout the afternoon the weather remained changeable, but around 7pm the clouds broke up and the wind dropped, so we headed back to the wood. The site is close enough to the A40 main road for there to be significant traffic noise. For this reason, together with the need for a kit that could be packed up and taken to shelter quickly if the weather broke, I chose my Sennheiser K6/ME66 in a Rycote windshield instead of the NT1A stereo rig.

On arrival at the wood we made our way to the first site where we’d heard some brief song during the day, but although the evening chorus was in full swing there were no Nightingales to be heard. The second site we’d found during the day was a 2km walk along some fairly swampy paths, so instead we wandered along a ride we hadn’t explored earlier. We hadn’t gone far when a brief burst of song from the bushes announced the first Nightingale of the evening. I set the microphone up using the trunk of a large tree as both support (for portability I had the Rycote zeppelin mounted on a telescopic monopod) and to block out as much road noise as possible. There were at least three, possibly more, Nightingales in the immediate area and they continued to sing for about an hour – not always from the same spot, but often close enough to the mic to get a good recording. They were competing with a nearby Blackbird and I’m fairly sure there was some interaction between the two species, as their phrases almost always came simultaneously, as can be heard in this first recording:

As the sun went down the other birds fell silent and the Nightingales continued singing, but unfortunately they moved across the ride. This meant my microphone, which had previously been pointing away from the road with a tree as a baffle, was now pointing directly at the traffic. With some heavy parametric EQ in Cubase LE the song can be rescued from the overwhelming roar of vehicles, but loses some of its richness:

Both recordings were made with a Sennheiser K6/ME66 microphone (mounted in a Rycote windshield with windjammer) and a Tascam HD-P2 recorder. Post processed in Cubase LE for EQ, level boost and fade in/out.

Posted from London, England, United Kingdom.

To test the mic out, I took it to our local nature reserve, Dawlish Warren NNR. It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and the reserve is immediately behind a popular tourist beach, so most of the recordings came out with a lot of human noise. After walking around for a bit I found this Willow Warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus) singing in a clump of birch trees. You can just hear some quiet conversation from the nearby golf course, and an occasional vehicle, but these are drowned out by the incredibly powerful song of the warbler, which was a good 20m from the microphone. Also audible are Rook (Corvus frugilegus), Blackbird (Turdus merula), Blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla), Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruleus), Herring Gull (Larus argentatus) and Linnet (Carduelis cannabina).

Posted from London, England, United Kingdom.